In general, various industries and businesses have adopted particular requirements and specifications forms with different structures and standards. In some industries, idea management systems and requirement management systems are used to organize the ideas and requirements of businesses. The best known approaches in many industries are the “contract specification” or “product specification” provided by the requesting party and the “requirement specification” or “functional specification” provided by the solution provider. Multiple standards for requirements and specifications currently exist for organizations to select from, for example, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics' Engineering (IEEE) Standards on Requirements, IEEE Std. 830-1998, and Software Requirement Specification (SRS), DIN 69905-VDI/VDE 3694—VDA 6.1. Some organizations elect to develop their own requirement and specification standards for organizational-wide use.
In some industries, the requirements and specifications standards may be similar for business and organizations collaborating on projects. However, in other, more frequent situations, the standards used by the requesting party and those used by the solution provider may be different, in effect creating confusion and conflicts during the sharing of data, instructions, and information within the product development. Additionally, current methods are tied to a single requirement or specification standard, allowing only information in certain formats to be included. In those situations, unique products may create problems for the parties involved through possible data mismatches or the inability to include some requirement or solution parameters based upon an incompatible standard. In other situations, an organization requiring a simple product may be forced into an unduly cumbersome requirement and specification standard, such that the design process becomes unnecessarily difficult to manage.
Product requirements can be dynamic, and it may be difficult for a solution provider to assess whether a current set of requirements is sufficiently stable for the solution process to begin. A solution provided without benefit of the full requirement set is likely to be insufficient. To avoid this, a solution provider may delay the solution process unnecessarily in anticipation of requirements changes.